‘The Conjuring’ Franchise to Spin Off Into ‘The Crooked Man’

When the history of this era’s horror movies is written, James Wan deserves his own chapter. Wan has had an enormous influence on the genre for the last decade, as one of the creators of the Saw, Insidious, and Conjuringseries. Though he’s branched out his directorial pursuits (he made the tremendous Furious 7 and is now hard at work under the sea on Aquaman), he’s also lending a creative hand on the ongoing universification of The Conjuring, which now has now less than three parallel spinoff series in various stages of production at Warner Bros.

The complete list: There was already one Annabelle film, about a creepy doll from the first Conjuring, with a second, Annabelle: Creation, coming to theaters this August. In 2018, we’ll get The Nun, a spinoff about a priest (Demián Bichir) investigating a demonic nun that was featured in The Conjuring 2. And now, per The Hollywood Reporter, we’ll get a third spinoff in the form of The Crooked Man, also based on a character who first appeared in Conjuring 2. New Line has hiredMike Van Waes to write a screenplay for the film, based on a story from Wan himself. Here’s more background on the character via THR:

The Crooked Man character is based on an English nursery rhyme: "There was a crooked man, and he walked a crooked mile. /He found a crooked sixpence upon a crooked stile. /He bought a crooked cat, which caught a crooked mouse. /And they all lived together in a little crooked house."

I’m struggling to think of a single movie series in history that has had three totally different theatrical spinoff franchises. Other than Star Wars, I can’t come up with one, and Star Wars only qualifies (for now) if you include the Ewok movies that went straight-to-TV in the United States. (They did get theatrical releases overseas, so I think they probably qualify with a small asterisk.) If The Crooked Man makes it to theaters, Wan’s legacy as a guy who made horror history will grow even larger.